


Blood in a Blink - A Spacedogs Story

by JD_Riley



Category: Adam (2009), Charlie Countryman (2013), Hannibal Extended Universe - Fandom
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Asperger Syndrome, Assassins & Hitmen, Attempted Murder, Canon Disabled Character, Crimes & Criminals, Disability, Frottage, Graphic Description of Corpses, Hannibal Extended Universe, Horror, M/M, Murder, Organized Crime, Social Anxiety, Social Disability, Spacedogs, dark themes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 21:34:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13796796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JD_Riley/pseuds/JD_Riley
Summary: The thrill of the kill fades as Nigel finds he has an unexpected witness.  He knows what it means to be sloppy—he won’t be sloppy again. A simple problem has a simple solution:  The quirky little Adam has to die.  Unfortunately for Nigel, things aren’t always as simple as they seem.[[No Regular Update Schedule]]





	1. Chapter 1

The thing about it was the eyes. That's what it came down to. In the end, everything was about how long a man could hold his gaze—that's what really put a fire into the soul. When a man looks a dog in the eyes, only one of two things will happen: the dog will ease back, or the dog will _bite_. Nigel was a biter. A man looks him in the eyes a half-second too long and something snaps inside him and it's a tangible, lethal _pop_ that can unleash something so devastating that he's got to up and disappear like fog in a breeze. The way that little cunt _Charlie_ looked him in the eyes. The way he insisted with huffing, struggling breaths that he was _in control—_ it was more than he could stand. The way he could actually bring himself to stare upward even for a moment to lock into his stare was enough to inspire the most hateful of rage and for what? _For what?_

For the memory of her. Every time he dreamed of his Gabi—and she was _his—_ her eyes when she stared at him with her delicate little nose just brushing the tip of his... She stared at him and he eased back. He always eased back for Gabi. She had conquered him and he had been unconquerable before her and he would be unconquerable again. She had somehow disarmed him with her music and her softness. Those eyes, ringed with dark, smudging shadows had been some kind of a mystery and surely he could never have truly known her, even though he was certain that he had. She had lied to him.

He took a deep breath, trying to rip himself from these horrible memories, these terrible moments when he had found that his love had been forsaken, that the woman he had sold his soul to love had betrayed him so completely. Here he was in New York and here he was fucking everything up. There weren't supposed to be witnesses. The whole thing was just some small business, of course, and who was he but a man who could take care of business? It was only some little things at first with certain contracts and in the beginning, there was no fear of any kind of _involvement_ from outside parties. Of course not, why should there be? But this? This was a little bit more and it was something that had given him pause.

After all, this was the same kind of thing that Victor had been hiding from him on that goddamned _tape_. He wasn't the kind of man who developed cold feet so he found himself here. Driving. The long road in front of him and a cigarette firmly planted between his teeth. He was cold. He was always so cold now that Gabi was gone. She had been his heat. His fire. She had held his gaze with those sharpened eyes and made him submit in a way he'd never once felt was necessary before. She had been his weakness.

So why did he feel weak now? With this creature in the seat beside him? With this boy who could never seem to look directly at him? How had he truly seen anything at all, really? He was quiet and fearful and he rocked with an alarming and frantic pace until he calmed and stared quietly out the window as if he had somehow made peace with the idea of having been taken like a dog to be put down. After all, that's what Nigel was doing. There could be no witnesses and to have one was to be sloppy and Nigel had _learned_ what it meant to be sloppy.

It was being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people noticing. This boy, pale and shivering and awkward, had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people noticing.

_You'll have to put him down._

He was a _liability_ and that was all and those were things that Nigel was very acquainted with. Things that had to be _taken care of_ or his life could get messy. That's how things had gotten in many places, last of all, Bucharest. Messy. That's all his life ever was and that's all his life would ever be. No matter how many silencers. No matter how many times he slipped off into nothingness and left no trail behind him. Bucharest wouldn't be his last mess. Not by a long shot.

So as the lights on the freeway tumbled past and each in turn gradually illuminated the dark curls and uncertain eyes of the little lost puppy beside him, he wondered whether or not this had to be it. He didn't know anything about this boy and whether or not he would be missed. Was there a chance that this mess was bigger than he thought? Was there a chance that he'd have to stay out of New York for longer than a few nights? He flicked a glance to the man's lap and felt the edge of his mouth twitch upward at the sight of his blue grocery bag sitting in his lap. The poor guy hadn't even dropped it when Nigel had forced him into the passenger seat of his waiting car. He hadn't even dropped it when he'd innocently wandered into a _scene_ and found three unlucky saps dead or dying in the dimly lit stairwell of the apartment building. He hadn't even said anything at all, seemingly incapable of speech through his immense shock.

Shock was a hell of a drug and for this kid, it seemed devastating. His whole body jarred at the sound of Nigel's low voice, his hands coming to whatever was in the plastic bag as if to use it as protection or maybe to protect _it_.

“Anyone waiting for you up there?”

There was a semi-long pause as the young man stared at the dashboard of the Taurus. No...that was wrong. He wasn't staring _at_ the dash of the Taurus, he was staring _through_ it. It was almost as if he were blind, his focus unclear and his lips gently parted as he tried to formulate an answer with his brows tilting downward in the center. His voice was so perfectly flat despite the confusion and the fear that made him tremble where he sat. “Where?”

“The apartment, you little _fuck_ ,” he let fall out of his mouth in a tumble of words so quick he wasn't certain if the boy could understand him or not. Nigel's patience was a small, weary thing that died at a glance and often did so when he wasn't answered quickly or predictably which happened far too often with these flighty American boys. “Was anyone _waiting_ for you?”

“N-No.” The slight shake of his head was followed by a hard swallow that bobbed his slender throat and begged Nigel to choke him until his strangely wandering eyes rolled up into his skull.

“Who are you? And don't fucking jerk me around or I swear I'll dump you over the side of the fucking freeway right now.”

He spoke in a matter-of-fact sort of way that was as baffling as it was interesting. “A-Adam. I'm Adam.” The anxiety and fear that had brought him into the car rocking and rhythmically squeezing at whatever was in the plastic in his lap was called to the fore again and Adam (just fucking Adam) was compelled to continue. “I l-live upstairs. I was going to eat dinner. I g-got some groceries and I was just going to go upstairs. I don't know what's going on and...and I'd like to get out of the car, please.”

“Afraid I can't do that for you, Adam. You see, you've put a bit of a wrench in the works here. It took months for me to get a good situation in this godforsaken city and here you've wandered right into the wrong place at the wrong time.”

The man was clearly trying very, _very_ hard to not lose control over himself. His fingers were gripped _hard_ into the plastic bag and there were glittering tears brimming in his eyes that shined in the intermittent lights over the freeway. He breathed in ragged sips and his voice was strained when he explained, “I...I was in the _right_ place. You. _You_ didn't belong there. _You_ were the one who wandered in! I...” His tears spilled over, making tiny splats on the plastic. “I _live_ there and I would like very much to go home now.” As an afterthought, he added to the end, “Please.”

“Polite little prick, aren't you? If that could save you, and maybe it has in the past, it won't here. I've got people counting on me, Adam, do you understand? They pay me to do a job and that's what I do for them and sometimes these jobs have a way of requiring discretion. You get it, Adam. I know you do.”

Adam didn't seem to understand. It wasn't surprising, the reality of a situation didn't usually hit right away but this was different, though _how,_ Nigel wasn't exactly certain. Adam closed his eyes and his hands came up from the bag and fisted into his curls by his temples, the heels of his palms pressing into his head. He didn't say anything but his breathing was harsh and maybe he was crying. He was an odd bird, this Adam. It was difficult sometimes for men to come to grips with their plans having gone awry and there were limited ways to cope, surely. Nigel had long ago learned to roll forward with things that happened, jumping from bit to bit and taking everything a moment at a time. Adam was a digger—he set his feet, dug his heels, and refused to move forward. His night was supposed to be simple—get groceries, come home, have a quiet evening, and go to bed. Through no fault of his own, it was ruined. A damn shame.

By the time his unwilling passenger was to the point where he could again put his hands down to the plastic bag, they were out of the city and there were no more lights rolling over the Taurus, the night surrounding them as an oppressive blackened weight. He wasn't certain Adam had any real idea of what was happening. That Nigel was going to eventually pull over, wrench him from the passenger seat and drag him kicking and struggling into a lonely field to put him down. At this point, the trajectory of the event should have been obvious but, Nigel conceded, Adam was an odd bird.

Curiosity was a sickness. Nigel glanced at him. “I'm going to kill you, you know.”

Adam's throat worked again when he swallowed and blinked. His brows, still pinched with his heavy discontent, were dark and defined in the dimness of the car and his voice was almost offended when he gave his nod. “I know.”

“You're not going to try to grab the wheel? Beg for your life?”

“N-Neither of those things are likely to change the outcome.” There were no more tears and that odd matter-of-factness pinged in Nigel's brain. It was true, anyway. There was a weighing of factors going on in that pretty little head of his even if he looked almost like he was off in another world, staring into nothing.

“That's the quickest I've ever seen a man come to terms with his own death. A fucking miracle worker, you are.” He smirked at himself and flipped the lights off on the car before he pulled over to the side on a long stretched of dark pavement. The nearest lights were those of a farmhouse far out into the distance and the wind howled around the Taurus as he made to get out. He opened the door and paused, staring over at Adam for a moment. “You going to run?”

This time there was one tear that escaped and fled down his cheek. “No.”

People were difficult to predict. People lied. Even people you loved and who you thought loved you would lie to you. But Adam _didn't_ and somehow Nigel knew that, the reality of it dawning over him in a warm wash as if he'd found a sun-soaked patch of hardwood with bare feet. Even when he had grabbed a hold of Adam's track jacket and dragged him out of the car, he was reflecting on this strange tidbit. He'd never met someone who wouldn't—or couldn't—deceive him. He tossed the kid to the ground, watching him stagger first and then fall, his grip on the plastic grocery bag failing and sending boxes of little frozen dinners scattering over the dirt and patchy grasses. Pulling out his pistol, he cocked it and gave pause while he watched Adam on his knees, reaching out with shaking hands to gather up the microwavable mac and cheese dinners to place them neatly back into the bag.

“For the love of all fucking Christ, what the fuck are you fucking doing?” Nigel sighed, feeling the weight of the gun against his thigh when he dropped his hands.

“I...I think that you don't really expect an answer, but if you do, you should tell me.” He was still on his knees, gathering up the last of the now mostly-thawed boxes.

“Fucking give me an answer, Adam.”

He sniffed. “I dropped these when you pushed me. They don't belong on the ground.”

Nigel put his eyes in his palm and gave a great sigh. “I don't understand you, Adam.”

He nodded, comprehending immediately and no stranger to the notion. “I know I'm different. It's not something I mean to do. Just like I didn't mean to see what...w-what I saw... Those people don't...they don't live in the building. They _didn't_. They _didn't_ live there. I've lived there for a long time and I've never seen them before—”

“Hey kid,” he interrupted, lifting his gun and taking aim. “Shut up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What am I doing? I continue to surprise myself with this fanfiction nonsense.
> 
> This fanfiction has **no regular update schedule** and will be updated whenever I feel like doing it.


	2. Chapter 2

It wasn't often that things veered so far of course. Yes, there were some days where the small things didn't line up exactly but those were fixable. There were hardly ever any _devastating_ deviations to the _schedule_. It wasn't a timing thing, after all. It was more a _motion_. He was supposed to go up the stairs, put the mac and cheese in the freezer (all except one), microwave his dinner, put on his show, masturbate, and then go to sleep. The comfort of being able to know exactly what was going to happen when he got to his apartment was second to none when it came to comforts. Adam shouldn't have had to worry about anything interrupting that schedule—why should it? Nobody knocked on his door. Nobody bothered quiet and unassuming little Adam Raki who was a little strange (really, who wasn't?) but harmless after all.

When he'd found Nigel standing in the stairwell over three bleeding men—he was fairly certain they were dead, they looked dead—he would have preferred to simply walk on by. It wasn't his business and after seeing something like that, he would be extra appreciative of sitting in his kitchen chair and eating his mac and cheese. Calling 9-1-1 wasn't something he was willing to do again and surely—surely he could just forget all of it. The whole event was enough to make a huge ball of anxiety twine up in his guts and tangle them together and that was _before_ he was scruffed by the tall, strong man who'd presumably killed those three men. When he was forced into a waiting car and effectively _kidnapped_ , it hadn't been a good way to round out his schedule. That was something big.

Now, he was sitting on his knees and the whole situation had really come down to it—he was going to get murdered and even though he knew what for, it still really struck him as awful. Just awful. What kind of night ends up like this? How did everything get so screwed up so easily? Did it happen to other people, _normal_ people, this way or was it just him? Just Adam Raki, absorbed in his own little world as if he could help it that he was the way he was. Maybe normal people could talk their way out of something like this. Maybe normal people could charm hit men.

_But probably not._

When the tall stranger had told him to shut up, he closed his eyes and bit his bottom lip, his head tilting down a little bit as he waited. Death shouldn't be so terrible. A sagging blackness maybe. No need for tiredness. No need for worry. No need to feel so _useless_ all the time. Maybe no more _other people_. That would be nice.

There was no gunshot. He heard a shift and then the man in black whispering to himself.

_“What the fuck.”_

He didn't move. He was cold and he was uncomfortable on the hard ground and all he wanted to do was go home or die. If those were the two options, then he would take either one. There was an _expectation_ now. With a low and flat tone, he asked softly, “Are you angry with me?”

“No, no Adam,” came the response and Adam looked up to find the man looking off toward his car, his posture and expression impossible to read while he studied his own car. “There's...there's someone fucking with my car.”

“What?”

“Stay here.”

“Okay.”

The man was gone, walking to his car and moving around it, a black specter himself as he crouched and slunk his way around the vehicle with his gun ready to fire. Adam sat on his feet with his mac and cheeses in his lap, waiting with his heart in his throat. He should have been getting up and running, he thought placidly. But where would he go? What would he do? How would running help him any more than simply sitting here? He didn't know the terrain, he didn't know how well this man knew the terrain either. Was it worth it, anyway? Every moment he'd thought of running, it had taken him far too long to figure out if he should do it or not. This time was the same.

_Why bother even thinking about it?_

He gripped his mac and cheeses tighter and waited, his heart picking up when he thought he saw something black moving through the night into the field behind him from the road. A person, perhaps. Someone who was “fucking” with the car.

A cool breeze made him shiver and he wished this horrible night would end. He was cold and his eyes felt sandy and tired. He wiped them on his sleeve even though they were dry and he felt the sting of the over-rubbed skin when he blinked. A terrible night. Unsalvageable. He was hungry. His stomach was growling and he was halfway convinced that it might be alright just to open one of his dinners right here and eat it out in the middle of a field even if it was still partially frozen. Even if it wouldn't taste as good. It wasn't really about the taste anyway, he thought as he contemplated the idea in the dark.

There was a whisper as the man in black came back to him and he felt a plunge in his heart. He wouldn't have enough time to contemplate eating the mac and cheese—why did everything have to happen so quickly?

_“The fucking cunt did in the tires. What the fuck kind of fuckery is this?”_

“I don't understand,” Adam replied softly.

_“Who are you, really? Hmm? Who are you to have someone out here to fuck with me? Did you have me followed?”_

Adam felt his lower lip tremble as he moved to cover his face. “I don't understand why you're saying this. I'm Adam. I'm Adam Raki. I l-live...I l-live up the s-stairs.”

There was a sigh and then Adam was scruffed again, pulled by the back of his track jacket and roughly half-dragged until everything was exponentially darker and he realized that the man had pulled him far enough that they were not afield anymore but at the edge of a black and dense set of woods. The trees were so tightly knit together that no starlight or moonlight could have entered and Adam staggered through the foliage as the man dragged him, branches scratching at his face and his hands and the bag of mac and cheeses.

_“What do they want?”_ he demanded, shaking Adam hard by the neck of his jacket.

“I don't know!”

_“Keep your voice down, you fucking prick.”_

He was quietly hiccuping a few sobs now and he could feel fresh tears on his cheeks while he hugged his dinners to his chest and tried to rock back and forth if only to gain just the smallest modicum of soothing. He wasn't stupid. He knew why he did what he did. He just didn't know why all of this had to happen to him—why things had turned out the way they had. He was covered in burrs, his tennis shoes were muddy, and his face was prickled and stinging from the whipping branches of these terrible murky trees.

Adam was dragged again, stumbling with his feet sliding every so often through the loose duff of the forest floor as he was drawn ever deeper into this horrible mire. He wished that it had all ended when the gun had been cocked. He wished it had all gone the way that was predictable. If he had to have his schedule ruined so terribly, at least there could have been a foreseeable outcome but this? This was open-ended and that was unmanageable. He was openly weeping now, unsure of what he was supposed to be doing or saying. He couldn't stop hugging his dinners to his chest and whimpering with every stuffy-nosed sob.

_“Fucking Christ.”_

He wiped his nose and blinked, his eyes already mostly used to the dark but only able to gather clues slowly in the murk and through his tears. There was a small clearing that they'd approached just barely visible through the trees and in the center of it was a dark wooden shack that appeared abandoned though it was not falling apart in the ways that many wilderness cabins tended to do. Someone was keeping it up. Someone was taking care of it and for what insidious purpose, Adam couldn't hope to guess.

“ _No..._ ” he whimpered, his body curling in upon itself as his knees gave way and he crumpled.

He was picked up and carried, those strong arms around him seeming not even to strain at his weight. Adam closed his eyes against the dark and horrid image of that shack as it drew closer with every strong and sure step that his grim reaper took toward it and soon he knew they were inside as the air was a little warm, a little moist, and a little _rancid_. He was set down on his feet with his knees wobbling and uncertain, the wood under his dirty shoes feeling soft like it was hollow underneath. At once he missed the male scent he'd caught while he was carried and the comforting pressure of those arms that caged him. Loose and lost, he stood and trembled, hardly able to bring himself to look around and see what was here in this place that instilled in him a primal horror that was as old as the world and as inevitable as the rising sea.

_There's something here._

The man in black rummaged through some things that were piled into the corner of the shack and busied himself by lighting an old oil lantern that still held some fuel, casting a steady but eerie glow over the mildewed refuse that littered the floor. There were no chairs or any furniture, only mounds of wet cardboard boxes that sagged and ripped to reveal the stacks of rotting magazines like _National Geographic_ and _Good Housekeeping._ The whole space was small but the most terrifying bit of it was not that it was dark or that the roof was leaking or even that there was an oddly-shaped black trash bag leaking god-knew-what on top of some of the boxes.

It was that there was a basement.

Adam backed himself into the only clear corner, the one directly across from the opening to the dark stairwell and he crouched downward, forming himself into the tightest ball he could. He wanted to tell the stranger to douse the light but then he didn't want to be in the dark. He wanted to pretend that he hadn't smelled the stale rotting stench that seemed to waft from the opening in the floor too—but he had, once. After his father died and he'd gone through every step they'd taken him through and he'd been to the place where they prepare _corpses_ , he'd smelled it. Chemical and terrible, it was a mixture of organic and inorganic and Adam wanted to scream. He felt it welling up in his throat, partially released as a pitiful whimper.

He couldn't articulate it. How had this happened? How had this come to be? He thunked his head on the wooden wall of the shack, creating an odd hollow sound as the pain helped him pull away from his fear and uncertainty. It was easier this way. He thudded his head again and again and again until he felt a strong hand stay him and keep him from doing it again, his heart filling with a hard frustration that made his mouth open in a ripping and horrible scream. Even that was cut off by the stranger's strong hand while he pleaded in harsh whispers for Adam to _shut the fuck up. Just shut the fuck up._

_Just. Shut. The Fuck. Up._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took me a long time to figure out. Adam is a son of a bitch to write, woo howdy. I hope anyone who's interested in this doesn't mind my delve into "backwoods horror" as a backdrop for Spacedogs "romance."
> 
> Listen. I'm trying my best here.


	3. Chapter 3

There were bodies in the basement. How the little fucker knew they were there, Nigel couldn't fathom. The kid was beyond himself, entirely out of his goddamned little mind and that probably meant that _just Adam_ was really that: _just_ Adam Raki who lived upstairs. The poor guy had nothing to do with any of this and damn if Nigel hadn't royally fucked up quite a few times tonight. He didn't have the patience to be sorry about anything and fuck it, why should he be? He took the oil lamp and carefully descended the stairs, careful to note that they weren't rotting through or overly damp. The meager light that was cast into the swallowing deep barely lit up rows of 55 gallon drums and Nigel wasn't stupid enough not to know exactly what was inside them.

“ _Who the fuck are we dealing with, Adam Raki?_ ” he whispered almost to himself. With haste, he came back up the stairs and knelt himself down in front of the rocking, jittering man he'd kidnapped only forty-five minutes ago. There was the thought that he should cut his losses and get the hell out of here. His heart was racing and his imagination was in overdrive. There had to have been ten to twenty drums down there, dirty and sealed and filled with corpses, smelling like chemicals and death. He could leave Adam here, he could run faster alone. He wouldn't have to drag this piece of dead weight along behind him.

But something was stopping him. Maybe it was his eyes—glassy and avoidant. Maybe it was his unsteady voice that pleaded but not for mercy. Maybe it was something less tangible and centered around the way he held those fucking mac and cheeses. As if his life depended on it. As if they symbolized something.

_Normalcy. Routine. Expectations._

He could shake the notion that he'd _really_ fucked up. He tried to soften his voice when he spoke and he knew that Adam could hear him even as his eyes didn't move to his face. “Listen, Adam. I'm sorry.”

There was a pause until Adam replied meekly, “Are you going to shoot me?”

It would be the more simple route, he admitted to himself. Just shoot the kid here and now, leave him for his own metal drum, and be loose again in the city as long as he could dodge whatever killer might have been stalking them. He gritted his teeth. “Not yet.”

“So you're going to.”

“I guarantee you, love, whatever I do to you will be a hundred times less painful than whatever this fucko's got planned for us.”

Adam's brows were pinched together as he put together exactly what Nigel meant. Gathering himself, he was able to stand, his wobbly legs giving Nigel a few second thoughts. As soon as they came, however, they were vaporized by a blast that splintered a hole the size of Nigel's fist into the side of the rickety structure. He'd just enough time to catch Adam as he stumbled forward before he ducked down just enough to miss getting blown away by the second shotgun shell. He felt the tickle of the wooden fragments over the back of his neck as he covered Adam with his body, unintentionally heroic, at least at the moment.

Hefting Adam up to his feet again and knowing they both had a decent amount of time between reloading and firing, he bashed through the door to the cabin with his shoulder, thanking whatever deity above that the psycho hadn't barred it to keep them like fish in a barrel. The old wood cracked and gave and he and Adam were off running again, the kid more fervent this time in his pace now that he wasn't blubbering all over the place. They made it pretty deep into the woods before he heard the blast of the next discharge behind them eerily close. More than that, he could hear his own panting breath in his ears. Upon the second discharge, he heard the soft ricochet of pellets in the trees and his heart squeezed with the sound of Adam's pained squeal.

He'd been running just ahead of Nigel so when he stumbled, Nigel was there to catch him by the back of his track jacket. With his adrenaline thrumming in full gear, he hefted Adam over his shoulder and focused hard on his footing between the uneven trees. Roots jutted up almost as if begging him to trip over them and the loose duff sprayed each time his foot couldn't get high enough to clear it. Fortunately, that very duff kept his feet from thudding overly hard over the earth and as such, it made their flight more stealthy than otherwise.

When the woods cleared and opened into a wide expanse of tall grasses, he could see the city jutting up over the horizon and the first lights of it not so far from where they stood. Gathering his scattered bearings, he mapped the city in his mind and surmised the general direction of Darko's apartment—a modest abode above the shop of a pugnacious Russian tailor. It was probably five to ten miles just to the edge of the city where roads webbed out and lights were sparse.

Nigel felt a tickle over the back of his hand that held the back of Adam's thigh to keep him steady as he was slung over his shoulder. In the weak moonlight, blood held the appearance of a black ooze and it dripped over his flesh.

“Adam...” he murmured in his surprise. Adam's only response was a muffled and meek little whimper.

He was off again though this time he was a bit slower, picking his path into the meadow with careful steps as not to create an obvious void where they had passed through. When he was a good bit within those tall grasses, the tallest of which reached at least to his armpits and were likely cat tails by the sogginess of the ground beneath his cheap sneakers, he ducked down and laid Adam on the soft, damp earth. Without words, he unfastened Adam's belt and jeans, tugging them down to his knees while his hands were pushed at and his wrists grabbed in weak grips.

“I need you to be quiet, Adam. You've got yourself fuckin' nicked.”

Thankfully, he really had just been nicked. From what Nigel could see, only one pellet had managed to hit him in the back of his thigh toward the outside and near to his knee away from the bone. It had had enough momentum to tear completely through and the exit wound was only about three to four inches from where it had entered. Nigel examined the major tendon there and determined it was undamaged before he hiked Adam's jeans back up over his white briefs and used the boy's own belt as a tourniquet to stem the bleeding.

 _What am I doing?_ Passed through his head. What _was_ he doing? If he left Adam in the cabin he would have been dead. If he hadn't grabbed him when he'd been shot, he'd be dead. If he left him right here and right now, there was a fairly good chance the boy could be dead by the time the sun rose and yet... _yet._ He was still holding his mac and cheeses. He couldn't rightly tell—he hadn't been paying close enough attention—but he was half sure that there had been four mac and cheeses. There were three now, dirty and mostly thawed and partially wrapped still in their plastic bag. He wasn't crying despite the pain he must have been in and he appeared for the most part lucid, staring up at Nigel with dry glittering eyes that asked him from the outside— _what are you doing?_

His ears pricked as he heard the shiffing of the grasses behind him. Their pursuer was near and it was now or never. He cautiously peered through the swaying grasses and lifted his head by inches to see if he could see the bastard before he got the top of his head blown clear off. He pulled back to cock his pistol and aimed in the direction they'd come. He fired, the gunshot echoing across the landscape and the flash of the muzzle marking where they were. He hoped to God he'd hit the scummy fuck.

Aware that at any moment he could be cut down, picked Adam up again and bolted, running until he couldn't feel the muscles in his legs anymore. Until he was sure that there must have been another shotgun report. Until he was certain he'd been shot and simply didn't know it and didn't care. He didn't stop until he was leaning against the side of a warehouse, struggling for his breath with Adam still draped over his back, holding onto his mac and cheeses as if he were holding on to his very life.

“Hey man—” came an unfamiliar voice and Nigel immediately lifted his pistol as he heaved for breath. “Whoa, whoa. No big deal here, just askin' if you're alright.” The young man raised his hands up, ducking his head in a show of submission before he casually adjusted the bandana around his head and then kept his hands raised. “I ain't tryin' for no trouble. Your friend alright?”

Nigel lowered his gun and looked around. “He is fine. You do me a favor, alright?”

“Yeah, dude.”

“Fuck off.”

“Come on, man.”

“I said fuck off.”

He shrugged one shoulder and put his hands in his pockets. “Yeah alright. Whatever man.”

It was difficult to find the strength to walk again. His legs felt like jelly and his lungs burned. He wandered until he could find the access road to the warehouses and when he finally found a main thoroughfare, it was late enough that there was nearly no one in sight. “Can I set you down, Adam? You can lean on me.”

A tiny “yes” came to him and so he did so, holding Adam with one arm so that he could stay solid as leaned on while he dialed Darko.

“ _Yes, Nigel? It is late. You are late. Is something the matter?_ ”

“Fuck yes something's the matter. I need you to pick me up.” Without waiting for a reply, he described where he was, careful to stay in the shadows. “Make sure you have room for two.”

“ _Two?_ ” came Darko's response, spiced with mild surprise.

“Yeah and bring some towels if you don't want your seats ruined.”

“ _Nigel,_ ” his friend warned. “ _If you are doing something stupid, I will be very upset with you._ ”

“Am I stupid?” he asked. “Do you think I'm stupid? If you think I'm stupid, leave me the fuck out here and I'll make sure my next stop is a hospital with plenty of police.”

He heard a prolonged and put-upon sigh come through the line and he imagined the man rubbing his eyebrows together with his fingers. “ _Ahhh...you know I would not let it happen. I will come. Myself. Do not move. If I have to chase you, I will be angry._ ”

Nigel hung up and shoved the phone back into his pocket, peering around for any sign of their follower. Maybe he really had caught him with that bullet. Maybe he'd managed to put him down like the murdering dog he was. Not that Nigel had much over him, being a murdering dog himself. After a moment, when he was certain they were alone save perhaps the members of some gang or another who perhaps thought it best to leave them be, Nigel murmured down to Adam.

“Alright, Adam?”

There was a weak nod where his head was against Nigel's shoulder and his voice was soft. “I don't understand what's happening.”

Nothing made any goddamned sense anymore to him either. He was supposed to have killed this liability, not saved his life. But something more sinister and exceedingly disconcerting had happened to him out there in the wilds outside the city and something like that was bound to make queer things happen. For some fucked up reason, on some level that didn't make any damned sense at all, Nigel had started to connect Adam to survival. As long as Adam lived—he could make it.

The dim moonlight illuminated the young innocent face of _just_ Adam Raki who lived upstairs and Nigel's heart made a tiny flip in his chest when he thought about what might happen once they reached Darko's apartment.

_As long as Adam lives...I can make it._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This should read quick. Sorry for the long wait on it. Nigel's got a strange bit of trauma-feels going on but at least he's somewhat self-aware.
> 
> This is weird. I still don't know if I like it.


End file.
